


come back to me

by chasingforeverandaday



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Childhood Sweethearts, Class Differences, F/M, atonement au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingforeverandaday/pseuds/chasingforeverandaday
Summary: Torn apart by betrayal.Separated by war.Bound by love.Arya/Gendry Atonement AU





	come back to me

**Author's Note:**

> Would this perhaps be the Atonement AU I've been working on since June? Yes, yes it is.  
Two significantly smuttier and more violent parts still to be finished. This section really functions as a prologue to the meat of the plot, but it just kind of kept growing and growing until it stood on its own. 
> 
> As per usual, this hasn't been beta-ed, so forgive my inability to keep to a single tense.  
Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

_ Once upon a time, there was a dark-haired bastard boy and a wild noble girl who lived in the North. He grew up in the shadows, never knowing the love of a father. She was a daughter of Winterfell, who looked just like her big brother. He worked and he worked and he worked, until one day someone recognized him for what he was. She grew up listening to the stories of brave knights and beautiful maidens, wishing that one day she would have songs sung in her own honor. _

Gendry Waters was born in London during the Great War. His mother worked in a pub around the corner from their tiny, freezing flat, and his father was in the wind, presumably a soldier who didn’t give a shit about the consequence of his wartime dalliances. But they were okay, his mum and him. She took care of him and called him her precious baby boy, doted on him and gave him the best life possible. Later on, Gendry himself didn’t have many memories of their time in London, merely how much more gray and sad it turned his mother with every passing year. 

It was only by a stroke of miraculous luck that picked the pair up from the dirty streets of London and deposited them in the wilds of green, green Scotland. On a day just like any other, young Gendry and his mama had been playing in the park when a blur of curly hair had run into him, knocking both to the ground. The little hurricane said his name was Robbie Stark, and he was lost. His papa and brother were gone, he sobbed in big rushes of words that got all jumbled up. Gendry’s mama wiped the boy’s tears and ruffled his hair, all while looking at Gendry with the same look in her eyes as when she told him they were having liver for supper.

Gendry was forced to abandon his game of tag to help his mama find this sniveling boy’s family. Arms crossed and huffing along angrily, he refused to hold Mama’s hand no matter how many times she asked. Eventually, he grew tired of being mean and looked at the red headed boy, who was clutching onto Mama’s dress tightly. He seemed to have stopped crying and was now hurriedly glancing around with bright blue eyes. 

Just when Gendry was about to ask what he was looking for, the boy’s face lit up as he let go of his tight grip on Mama’s dress and darted off across the park. Gendry could hear his mama grumbling under her breath as she picked him up to give chase, finally catching up to Robb once he’d thrown himself at the man who must be his papa. Next to them is another boy, one with curls almost as dark as Gendry’s, who must be Robbie’s brother. He is making a face at Robbie’s dramatics, so Gendry decides he likes him more already and goes over to talk to him while his mama talks to their papa.

Robbie’s brother’s name is Jon and he is much quieter, barely talking at all when Gendry asks him questions. Just when he is going to give up on making a new friend today, Jon’s eyes go wide with wonder as he tells Gendry all about their home up North with rolling hills for sledding and cold lakes for swimming and blue skies that went on forever. When Gendry turns to his mama to ask if they can go to this place where life isn’t quite so gray, he sees Jon’s papa staring at him like he’s suddenly turned into a monster, like the ones Mama tells Gendry about in his bedtime stories. 

Mr. Stark shakes his head quickly before looking at Gendry one more time, eyes squinting like he cannot believe what he sees. As he starts to talk to Mama again, his voice is different and he keeps glancing over to where the three boys are now playing.

When the Stark men head back to the North, Gendry and his mama go too. After a week, he has decided that maybe Robbie isn’t so bad and maybe Jon is a little more serious than he needs to be, but they are his friends now, so he won’t tell them that.

* * *

Arya Stark came screaming into a world new to peacetime, a true wolf according to her mother. From the moment she could walk, she could run, and run she did, terrorizing the staff, scrambling all over the estate, muddying the hems of her dresses faster than anyone could wash them. Despite all her mother’s best wishes, she could no more sew a straight stitch than she could play the piano. No, she was a little Northern hellion and her father loved her for it.

Arya preferred traipsing around after the boys than sitting inside with her demure mother and sister. Robbie was sometimes reluctant to let her join because she was a girl and so very small, which meant Jon was easily her favorite brother, since the little ones were too small to truly be interested in anything beyond their own fingers yet. Jon wasn’t her best friend though, that was Gendry. 

For as long as she could remember, Gendry was there, woven through the background of life in Winterfell. His mother was one of the maids and she had beautiful blonde hair that always seems to escape from under her cap. The pair of them loved to wander after her on cold winter days, hiding in the drafty old halls and searching for the secret passages they just know must be somewhere in the ancient manor house. 

Sometimes Robbie and Jon would join in, and the four of them would get into all sorts of mischief which inevitably ended with her father shaking his head with a wry smile on his face. There were times when Sansa would take it upon herself to insist they play knights and princesses with her, always arguing that Gendry had to be Prince Charming since he was the only one not related to her. Typically relegated to the role of ugly stepsister or evil witch, Arya would always roll her eyes at her sister’s dramatics, ready to grab her best friend’s hand and escape the rest of the Starks.

But her favorite days were ones when she and Gendry could leave the house and run off alone into the woods. Those days his shoulders seemed a little bit lighter, as if the knowledge that no one could see him but her made him safer, more free. Deep among the trees, she could pretend she had run off to live as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest, Gendry as her loyal partner. Or maybe they were knights of King Arthur’s famous Round Table, off on some grand adventure. Perhaps she could even be the princess for once, though she would be the bad kind, one who would insist on slaying her own dragon without waiting for a prince to save her. 

She lived for those times, that freedom. When the etiquette lessons and lectures about ladylike mannerisms and derision over how unlike her perfect older sister she was became too much, she would simply drift away in her mind, imagining all the while she was off in her own world, Gendry standing tall by her side.

* * *

Over the years, Gendry and Arya grow closer as the boys drift apart. Robbie becomes Robb, a distinction that he insists automatically makes him so much more mature than his friends. Jon withdraws from the world when he learns of his true heritage after eavesdropping on an argument between his <strike> father </strike> uncle and <strike> stepmother </strike> aunt. Sansa had long given up on all pretense of socializing with him, a mere member of the staff, though he does occasionally catch her staring at him from the windows of the drawing room as he works outside the stables. But Arya is still Arya, still wild and free, the complete opposite of her restrained and proper sister. 

And though he’s a few years older than her, she is his best friend. Arya who always comes to find him in the stables while he cleans, Arya who teaches him to ride and takes him to swim with her in their little grove deep in the woods, and Arya who he thinks he may love.

Can he be in love with her? Is that allowed? Because all he hears from her now seems to be all about how her Lady Mother and Sansa are planning both of their coming out parties and which families with boys her age will be invited; how she’s begun to be fitted for more and more dresses as her mother’s leniency in letting her run amok on the estate grows stricter and stricter, a dwindling leash on her independence; how her father looks at her with a sadness in his eyes when he tells her she looks just like her Aunt Lya.

Gendry has long since known that he and Arya come from very different worlds, that those little dreams in the back of his head of always being by her side are nothing more than that, dreams. Sure, Arya always declares that isn’t a thing in the world that could come between them, but she was meant for so much more than him. She is going to be a great lady one day who will not have time for the lonely stable boy that wants to love her.

So he stays quiet, content to simply be around her for as long as he can. The stablemaster will continue to roll his eyes every time the little Stark girl traipses into his domain, dragging his towering charge by the hand; but he will smile softly to himself as he grumbles about young love. The cooks will set aside a basket of food on each of Gendry’s free days, knowing the pair will wander off into the woods in search of adventure, or quiet, or maybe just each others’ presence. Perhaps the most telling sign of their closeness is the way that Nymeria lays in an empty stall while her mistress is busy inside the great house, baring her stomach to the Waters boy for scratches and belly rubs, nuzzling his hand for the treats he has long since kept for her.

* * *

Gendry almost kisses her once, on a beautiful summer day, alone in the woods like so many times before. Arya is halfway up their tree, skirts hiked past her knees as he stands below with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed, the image of disapproval but for his twitching mouth giving way to a grin. As always, she is teasing him, trying to rile him enough to chase her higher up the old oak, the way he used to when they were truly children. 

In the middle of a less than amusing jest at his bravery (or lack thereof), he hears a shattering crack and his heart stops. She falls. Arya falls out of the tree with a screech, limbs flailing amidst the leafy green branches. Gendry manages to break her fall with his body, all the air in his lungs leaving in a huff as he catches her and then collapses under their suddenly combined weight. 

Sprawled on the soft forest floor, with the girl who knows him best lying stunned on his chest, he cannot move, doesn’t dare to breathe until Arya sucks in a deep gulp of air and starts to cough. Sitting up gently, still cradling her in his lap, he runs his hands over her arms and along her sides, desperately praying he finds no broken bones or tender spots. Her breath hitches as he passes over her ribs, abject fear at having hurt her freezing him in place, not daring to move a muscle.

That fear keeps his eyes wide and his voice quiet, hesitant. “Arya, are you okay? Are you hurt?” She smiles softly as she shakes her head, her own hand raised to stroke his cheek. 

“Well good sir, it seems you saved me from a rather embarrassing fate. Wild Arya Stark, fairy queen of the woods, taken down by a stupid branch.” Meeting his worried gaze, her sarcasm falters as she continues to trace his face with her touch and her stare. “I promise Gendry, I am fine, just a bit winded. Nothing a bit of rest won’t fix.”

“I’m sure that…” Whatever Gendry had been planning to say leaves him as she trails a fingertip over his bottom lip, scarcely able to breathe as he realizes just how close they are to each other. He can pick out a thousand different shades of silver and gray in her eyes, a pink flush to her cheeks that wasn’t there a minute ago. Gendry leans in just as she removes her light touch, an expression on her face he can’t quite read. Opening his mouth to say words that will not come, he is helpless to do anything but watch as she scurries out of his lap, moment gone. 

He is sixteen, and that is the day he loses his heart for good.

* * *

Their childhoods definitively end the day Lord Stark calls Gendry into his study, a quiet, dark room Gendry hasn’t ever been allowed to enter in all his years at Winterfell. While a distant figure, Gendry will remember what Lord Stark did for him and his mother his entire life. Lord Stark has always been so kind to both of them, ever since he plucked them out of London and brought them to this beautiful corner of the countryside, so different from the dirt grey city he was born into. Of course, he’s never felt the need to tell Gendry, or his mother for that matter, just why he decided to save them from that miserable existence. Not until that very moment, that is.

When he walks into the room, Lord Stark is at the great desk that seems to fill the room. He knows from Robb and Jon that two boys of ten can fit underneath with room to spare, and he knows from Arya that her father keeps sweets in the third drawer down on the right. He knows Eddard Stark is the kindest nobleman he’s ever met, but as the boy desperately in love with the man’s youngest daughter, he is terrified. Then Arya’s father opens his mouth and tells him of the man he used to call his best friend, and a very different kind of dread fills Gendry.

Suddenly, Gendry is seventeen and leaving behind the only world he knows for an uncle whom he’s never met, never spoken to. According to Lord Stark, he is all that is left of the great Baratheon family, he and his daughter, a younger cousin (he has a cousin!) named Shireen that no one can quite describe, for she hasn’t left the Storm’s End lands in nearly a decade. His mother will be going with him, for she would never leave her precious baby boy all on his own in a strange new world. And while Gendry is grateful to finally learn this intimate truth about himself, he feels torn in half at the thought of leaving Winterfell.

Of leaving Arya.

When he goes to tell her, she yells and fights and cries as he drags her into a tight hug. Arya is still tiny, this fourteen year old force of nature tucked neatly under his chin as tears stream down her face. “Why do you have to go?” she whispers into his chest, fingers clenched in the material of his shirt as he rocks her back and forth.

Resting a cheek against the top of her head, he takes a deep breath before pulling back. Because this is his chance to be more than just the stableboy in love with his lady, this is his chance to be worthy of her, to prove that he can be what she needs, this is his chance to secure a future where Eddard Stark cannot tell him _ no _ out of hand, without thought. But he can’t say any of those reasons, not yet at least. So instead, he chooses the simple and cryptic, “Because if I go, then I can come back.”

Arya’s nose scrunches adorably, and he has to steel himself, because she’s about to argue with him and he has never exactly learned how to tell her no. “That makes no earthly amount of sense, you are aware of that? Gendry, why can’t you stay here?” The _ with me _ is left out, but somehow he hears them just as clearly as if she’d shouted them to his face. 

He takes a deep breath and prepares to break his own heart. “Arya, you know there’s only so much here for me. This is a chance to be more than just a stableboy. I can be more than this, please understand!” he pleads, trying to make her see that this is an opportunity he never thought he’d ever get. “Arya, I have more family than just my mum, I have an uncle and a cousin.”

“I can be your family!”

“No, Arya, no you can’t. You can only be my lady if I stay here.” And this is the problem that has been rattling around in his brain for years now, not that he entirely realized it for the longest time. She’s the daughter of a lord, and he’s nothing. Or he was. “Do you really think your mother is going to let you stay here and go off into the woods with me for the rest of our lives? One day, you’re going to leave, and then I won’t have anything. But if I go now, then…” 

Something new dawns in her eyes, something he thinks looks like hope and longing and maybe even love. “If you go, then you can come back.”

“As more. And then no one can stop us.” Gendry risks weaving their fingers together, pulling her hand up to kiss the back of it, a move he’s seen her grimace at before when it comes from the rich boys her mother invites to the estate. From him, all it produces is a widening of eyes and a hitch of breath, before a determined scowl makes it across her blush stained face. 

“Alright. You can leave. But you have to promise that you’ll come back to me.”

Cradling her against his chest, he swears an oath he will keep till his dying day. “Arya Stark, I promise I will always come back to you. There’s nowhere else I’d rather go.” He bends down and places a swift peck on her lips, turning to leave before he throws all caution to the wind and kisses her with all the love in his body. She watches him go, hand raised to her tingling mouth.

And so he packs his things, and with his mother on his arm, Gendry Waters departs Winterfell for the last time, driving off to a new life as Gendry Baratheon, upstart heir to Storm’s End. Arya Stark stands at the window of the library, tears in her eyes, but faith in her heart, knowing they will see each other again, one day.

**Author's Note:**

> Next installment: a time skip, reunions, library sex, The Dress, and some less than pleasant occurrences.


End file.
